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How Creative Are You?

tags: online quiz I kinda liked the results from this quiz -- how about you? How did you score? You Are 86% Creative You are an incredibly creative person. For you, there are no bounds or limits to your creativity. Your next creation could be something very great... Or at least very cool! How Creative Are You?

Best science blogging of 2008

Bora has posted a list here of all the nominated posts to his Open Lab Anthology. While we don't yet know who will "make it" into the top 50, I was pleased to see some posts from Sciencewomen were nominated. Thanks to the nominator(s)! and go check out all the other great posts people put in the online pot.

Omens and portents of Cephalopodmas

We have a sign: there are reports of a new video from Tsunemi Kubodera of an Architeuthis—unfortunately, I haven't been able to find a copy of the video online anywhere yet. If anyone finds it, let me know! There's a small and rather grainy copy of the video on the BBC website! The copy at CNN is of much higher quality.

Digital Biology and the Deep Blue Sea

"Digital biology," as I use the phrase, refers to the idea of using digital information for doing biology. This digital information comes from multiple sources such as DNA sequences, protein sequences, DNA hybridization, molecular structures, analytical chemistry, biomarkers, images, GIS, and more. We obtain this information either from experiments or from a wide variety of databases and we work with this information using several kinds of bioinformatics tools. The reason I'm calling this field "digital biology" and not "bioinformatics" (even though I typically use the terms as…

Where are the Trapped Miners??: Urgent Need for Tracking System

Join an on-line chat at 1:00 pm today (8/16) on technology to locate trapped miners. On day 11, the rescue efforts continue for the six trapped miners at a Utah coal mine.  A third borehole (2") punctured the mine workings yesterday afternoon to allow a camera to be lowered into the mine to scan for any sign of the miners.  With each borehole drilled and each camera-search, the questions being repeated across the nation are "where are the miners?" and "why don't we know more precisely where they are in the mine?"  After the Sago disaster, family members, worker advocates and coal…

Woo-ers are dicks.

Orac recently had a post up on Terminator Cranks. Which Cranks are the most persistent? NEW QUESTION. Which Cranks are the biggest assholes? My vote goes to the alt-med crew, as a whole. The anti-vaxers are infamous for their ability to be complete and utter assholes. Like, above and beyond simple assholery. You basically just need to look at the 'Antivaccination lunacy' tag at Oracs place. From photoshopping disgusting pictures to calculated harassment of anyone who speaks out against their message, you can always count on an anti-vaxer to be a huge fucking asshole. The Skepchicks are…

Bounded awareness: Socrates 2.0

Socrates gave us the foundation of modern philosophy when he claimed that his only wisdom was in knowing his own ignorance. By implication, of course, everyone else was even stupider than he and just didn't know it, believing they were thinking/acting with all the information available and all the mental faculties necessary to put that information to good use, when in fact they were hopelessly crippled by their unrecognized obtuseness. Admit it, you'd have made him drink hemlock too. According to an article by Chugh and Bazerman, entitled "Bounded Awareness: what you fail to see can hurt…

Oooh look... Shiny

So the other day I stopped at the grocery store to get a few items for the trip up north. One of the things I needed was water. I know, I know, if I buy bottled water the earth will split in half and we will all die. But you have not tasted the water that comes out of the tap at the cabin. Anyway, I bought a couple of gallons, and then decided to buy a six pack of bottles, because we had four people going up in the car, two were kids who never drink enough water, and I thought this would be a good idea. Then, only after deciding to get bottles of water, I walked over to the bottled water…

Food writers, little help please? More bunk about Food Miles.

And yet it continues. I'm so naïve. I was astonished several months ago to note that the same food miles and local food conversation was going on and on. But here it is again. The same one. Anew. Again. More. the. Same. (from a study by the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, 2001-2002) Another Food Miles article, another bad article. This one from Jane Black writing at Slate (though she's a food writer for the Washington Post). She carries forward the single variable case to skim the surface of the issue. Fine, journalists skim surfaces, it's what they do. But if it's…

How a Future Feature of the iPhone Gives Civil Libertarians an Incentive to Unlock It

I suppose we can start referring to 'unlocked' iPhones as FreedomPhones. Why? Well, I guess you could say, "Dictatorship, there's an app for that": The days of filming a live concert or sporting event on your iPhone may soon be a distant memory. Apple is developing software that will sense when a smartphone user is trying to record a live event, and then switch off the device's camera. Anybody holding up their iPhone will find it triggers infra-red sensors installed at the venue. These sensors would then automatically instruct the iPhone to shut down its camera function, preventing [any]…

The Failures of the Traditional Media in Iraq

Let me count the ways. Actually, Greg Mitchell has done that for us. Here's a couple for you: 11) In one of the purest "my bads" of the war, Fox News' John Gibson ripped Neil Young after the rocker released his protest album Living With War. Gibson demanded that Young go see the new United 93 movie and even offered to buy his ticket. Young, it was soon pointed out, had actually written one of the first 9/11 songs--"Let's Roll," about, you guessed it, Flight 93.... 15) In April 2007, CBS' Bob Simon admitted to Bill Moyers that his network should have dug deeper into the false claims on WMD…

Buses are sprouting messages of reason everywhere…except Australia

Bold atheists have been buying ad space on buses in London and Washington DC—it's been a successful tactic for raising the profile of godless groups, and has also been somewhat controversial. The Atheist Foundation of Australia sought to emulate those successes, and met an obstacle: the ad company simply refused to allow them to buy ad space, without giving a reason, and you can tell it was simply religious bigotry behind the decision. It's not as if they were trying to put up abusive or profane messages. Here are some of the slogans they suggested. We started off with "Atheism - because…

Science Teachers in action

The fifth part of Kevin's snake research in rural China is coming up on this blog today at noon. How do you think Kevin became such a scientist at such a young age? And how can we get more Kevins? Answer: science teachers in our schools. That is why we need to help teachers make science alive and exciting for their little charges. Just lookk at what is needed: How about Dino-Mite!, in which a SC teacher needs just $221 dinosaur books for the school library. Or Scientists in the Making, for a teacher in a Gifter & Talented Magnet school in rural North Carolina in which 48% of the…

Responsible consumption of shrimp

I love seafood, but I eat it quite rarely. About a third of my old Department did fisheries and aquaculture science so I've seen many seminars and Thesis defenses on the topic and am quite aware of the problems with the world's fisheries stocks. I also prefer freshwater fish - I grew up on the Danube and my Mom fixes the best Fish Soup in the history of the Universe. But, if you like seafood and you want to eat shrimp occasionally, yet you want to act in an environmentally responsible way, you need to know quite a lot about ecology, about behavior and natural history of shrimp, about the…

iPod iChing - Wazzup with COROT Bro?

Early stormy friday, and we ask the Omniscient iPod to prognosticate What will we hear from the early COROT discovery announcement due any day now? Whoosh goes the randomizer. Whoosh. The Covering: Aids - Yellowman The Crossing: Louie, Louie - Toots & The Maytals The Crown: Peaches - Stranglers The Root: Fiskurinn Hennar Stínu Haukar The Past: Sárt er að missa - Utangarðsmenn The Future: The Saturday Boy - Billy Bragg The Questioner: Di Provenza il mar - La Traviata The House: Tangó - Utangarðsmenn The Inside: Ready to Run (live) - Dixie Chicks The Outcome: Metropolis - the Pogues The…

ScienceBlogs Celebrates our One Millionth Comment in Seattle

Today is a very special day because I will be helping ScienceBlogs to celebrate our one millionth comment at a party they are hosting in Seattle! Yes, I am in beautiful Seattle at this moment, and I will be at the ScienceBlogs party, along with some of my Seattle pals, and also some of my birding pals, as well as the Seattle Skeptics and later (around 630pm), some people from the Pacific Science Center will also be there! As a token of our appreciation to our readers, Seed Media Group has given us a budget so we can pay for the food and for the first few rounds of drinks -- regardless of what…

Carver On Education In Archaeology

Martin Carver in the editorial to the current issue of Antiquity: If the PhD is an apprenticeship, why does it include no formal training in fieldwork—our method of recovering primary data? Quite apart from the fact that the world is already full of academics who don't know how to dig (but think they do), not every doctoral student is destined for a job in a university. The commercial sector, as archaeology's largest employer, needs their talents too—but it would help if they were trained. Six months in the field, out of 36 months in a library, strikes me as a minimum (leaving 30 months to…

083/366: Bat-Toys!

The Pip is nute about superheros at the moment, primarily the Justice League, and particularly Batman. He's got quite the pile of toys around this theme, making for a decent photo subject: The Pip's collection of superhero toys. Technically, these aren't all Bat-Toys-- you can see a Spiderman Lego set in there (from some alternate universe in which Peter Parker got Tony Stark to buy him a Spider-Copter) and also a few Transformers. But Batman holds down a pretty solid plurality in the toy population. The Bat-Boat that's front and center in this shot (which ended up in the bathtub shortly…

One down, two to go

Here are a few — only a few — of the photos from our triumphant day in St Cloud. This is Alaric trying on those funny academic robes. If he had to wear them every day, like I do, he wouldn't be laughing so hard. (You do know that we professors wear these things all the time, right?) Here's that wonderful instant when President Saigo handed him his cardboard folder with the generic (but magical!) promise of a real, live diploma inside. It's kind of like Uncle Milton's Ant Farm, which doesn't actually contain any ants, but does have a coupon so you can mail off for some. I know, it's a…

Watch That Windshield

I got my driver's licence late, at age 22, because I wasn't interested in cars and didn't want to support automotive culture. When I finally did get myself a licence, it was because I was starting to feel embarrassed at being driven everywhere by my wife and my colleagues. I didn't buy a car of my own until I was 33. But long before trying out any real cars, I learned a thing or two about them from the 1987 computer game Test Drive. Most importantly, I learned what the gears are for. They are there because a car's engine can't stand an infinitely high rate of revolution. And, I also learned…

A triumphant beginning!

Last night was the activities fair at UMM, where student groups try to catch the attention of the new students and persuade them to sign up. It was a mob scene with hundreds of milling people, and there in the middle of it … the brand new UMM chapter of the Campus Atheists, Skeptics, and Humanists. Here are most of the current officers — the missing one was me, behind the camera. Viktor Berberi, Collin Tierney, and Skatje Myers (and Richard Dawkins playing on the computer) I was impressed. I expected they'd go over there and get maybe half a dozen to a dozen people to sign up, but instead…

And Now the BSB!

Mathematician Tanya Khovanova has just posted a review of the Big Sudoku Book. She writes: I received the book Taking Sudoku Seriously by by Jason Rosenhouse and Laura Taalman for review and put it aside to collect some dust. You see, I have solved too many Sudokus in my life. The idea of solving another one made me barf. Besides, I thought I knew all there is to know about the mathematics of Sudoku. One day out of politeness or guilt I opened the book — and couldn’t stop reading. The book is written for people who like Sudoku, but hate math. This is so strange. Sudoku is math. People who…

Dubious parentage

It would seem like sweet poetic justice if James Watson were found to be 1/8th African, but I'm afraid I don't quite believe it. This is news coming from a company called deCODE genetics, an Icelandic outfit that analyzes an individual's racial background on the basis of various genetic markers. While I can buy the claim that they can assess the distribution of various alleles in populations, I really dislike the game of trying to work in reverse and assign the fraction of a race to an individual. I don't think Larry is much impressed with them, either. Here's another article that brings up…

Uncertain Dots 18

In which our series of Google hangouts becomes old enough to vote and buy cigarettes-- but not drink! Miscellaneous things mentioned in this: -- My forthcoming book at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. I turned in the copyedits and figures a week or so ago, and cashed an advance check today, so it's definitely going to happen. Pre-order now, because Hachette bought my publisher, so you don't know how long those buttons will be there. -- My appearance on the Read Science! hangout. -- A commentary piece I did for Physics World on the OPERA neutrino story. I wasn't paid for this. (You probably need…

Links for 2010-01-03

Ringing in Kepler's Year : Built on Facts "Happy new year! While we're thinking about years, why don't we think about one of the first guys to explore the physical reason behind the year?" (tags: science astronomy planets education math blogs built-on-facts) The Universe within 12.5 Light Years - The Nearest stars A handy reference for interstellar tourism. (tags: astronomy space maps science planets) BOOK VIEW CAFE BLOG » Ways to Trash Your Writing Career: The Wall of Books "If you've been to a science fiction convention you have likely encountered The Wall of Books. You go into a…

Clay Shirkyâs bracing dystopianism

Even with that experimentation, he added, the ongoing shrinkage of newspapers is likely to create a âgiant holeâ that will not be filled for some time. He said he has a vision of communities of 10,000 people or fewer becoming rife with âcasual endemic corruption,â as newspapers are no longer able to fulfill their traditional watchdog roles. via dankennedy.net I live in a town of 8,500, and I'm not sure I buy this. I see Shirky's point. But I think he misses how porous and connected the lines of communication in a town of this size are, and how they can curb casual endemic corruption -- not…

$55K to Learn Mandarin, Except She Doesn't

So, I'm trying to learn Mandarin right now, in order to be able to communicate when I go visit my parents in China. I'm learning from a student here at UM, for a modest per hour wage. However apparently some people think that all those tones and characters will just jump into your brain if you throw enough money at them. In Australia, the former Federal Government's Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone's obsession with learning Chinese Mandarin has been revealed to the public. The public that is footing the bill estimated to be worth AUD$70,000 (RMB430,000 or USD$55,000). Yikes. But at…

Those who do not remember the National Lampoon are condemned to repeat it

Deja vu, man, deja vu. I remember this magazine cover—I even bought the magazine, not because I was worried about the dog, but because I always read the National Lampoon. This is supposed to be a joke, though. So now Goosing the Antithesis leads me to the Answers in Genesis page, and what do I see? You have got to be kidding me. This is no joke: AiG has a a new campaign going that one-ups NatLamp and suggests that if you don't buy in to Jesus, you will get shot. If we evolved from lower life forms, then the Bible isn't true and we are no more than animals. So why should we listen when it…

Antibiotic Salad Anyone?

Scientists took lettuce, corn, and potatoes and grew them using soil treated with hog manure that had the commonly used livestock antibiotic Sulfamethazine in it. All three plants uptook the Sulfamethazine. You know what that means: mmmmm... Wait, no, I think I meant yuk. With 9-13 million kg of livestock antibiotic used every year and the increasing use of the manure to treat crops, the risk of more antibiotic resistant bacteria goes up. The funny thing about the antibiotics and livestock is that it does nothing for the consumer (except shave a few cents of the sale price). If anything, it's…

Intelligent Design the Game

Ohh Kirk Cameron you're so silly! "We are very excited about this game because it presents both sides of the creation-evolution argument, and in doing so, shows that the contemporary theory of evolution is perhaps the greatest hoax of modern times," said creator Kirk Cameron I heard about this game coming out a month or two ago but was never able to find much more information on it until now. I'm not really sure how the game shows evolution as 'stupid' but this quote should hold you over until you want to spend the $29.95 to buy the game: "Intelligent Design versus Evolution" is unique in…

Do not buy ivory!

Increased Demand for Ivory Threatens Elephant Survival - washingtonpost.com: An international effort to halt the illegal killing of elephants for their ivory tusks has all but collapsed in most of Africa, leaving officials and advocates alarmed about the survival of the species. A study released yesterday estimates that as many as 23,000 of the animals were slaughtered last year alone. … "Almost half of Africa's elephants had been slaughtered in the eight years before the ban, but now the situation is even more extreme because the number of animals is so much lower to begin with," [Sam Wasser…

Driving in Snow and Risk Homeostasis

I had the pleasure of driving for a few hours in yesterday's New England blizzard. (I was coming back from a radio interview for "On Point," which is broadcast out of WBUR in Boston. You can listen to me here.) While driving up a white I-93, I counted more than a dozen vehicles that had lost control, zoomed off the highway shoulder, and ended up trapped in snow banks. So far, so normal. A snow storm makes for treacherous driving. But here's the surprising observation (at least, it was surprising to me): 8 of the 13 cars were trucks. Big, brawny 4x4's. The kind of vehicle that people buy…

Liar's Poker a generation later

Michael Lewis has a very long piece up sketching out the fever dream that was the late great Wall Street: This was what they had been waiting for: total collapse. "The investment-banking industry is fucked," Eisman had told me a few weeks earlier. "These guys are only beginning to understand how fucked they are. It's like being a Scholastic, prior to Newton. Newton comes along, and one morning you wake up: 'Holy shit, I'm wrong!'â" Now Lehman Brothers had vanished, Merrill had surrendered, and Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley were just a week away from ceasing to be investment banks. The…

Picking at the Bones of a Dying Bookstore

It's no secret bookstores have been in trouble for some time now. Small independent bookstores have been dropping like flies left and right. One of the oldest and best loved independent bookstores in Philadelphia, Robin's, recently closed, reinvented itself, and reopened in new space above its old location. It now sells mostly used books, along with some new books, and focuses on events as well. People are just dang glad to have some piece of the old store, opened in 1936 (in the middle of a depression!), in existence. But hey, at least we have the big chain stores, right? Maybe not.…

Step Outside Yourself: See Yourself as the Internet Does

tags: Personas, Online Personality, Online Information, technology, art GrrlScientist Personas [larger view] Personas is an interesting program that searches for online references to you and uses it to create a piece of art that describes you. To do this, it analyzes these references for repeated words and phrases and builds a graphic (like the one you see above) that "describes" you. It's really interesting because you can watch the process as it builds this picture and gives you some food for thought regarding the sorts of information that is "out there" about you. It's almost as…

Around the Web: The ugly underbelly of coder culture, Used-book stores in the digital age and more

The ugly underbelly of coder culture Used-Book Stores in the Digital Age The Massive Open Online Professor Leave only footprints: how Google's ethical ignorance gets it in trouble The Arrogance of Publishers vs. Academic Culture - Why the Outcome Is Virtually Certain Becoming Prof 2.0 Library Journal Design Institute, Denver The New York Public Library Central Library Plan and its Critics The academic ethics of open access to research and scholarship You have to share Has Second Life Lived up to Expectations? Communications, Social Media, and Technology Are Not Synonyms If online education…

ConvergeSouth05 - International Coverage

I understand that this year's ConvergeSouth will be different in theme and format from last year's, but that does not mean it is not going to be full of interesting people and conversations... Here's a little bit more about ConvergeSouth, session by session: Friday morning: Michael Moran started off the Friday morning with a session on the effect bloggers have around the world, particularly in countries where freedom of speech and freedom of press do not exist even on paper. The prime example, of course, was Hoder, a blogger who started the Iranian blogging revolution, keeping the Iranian…

Call for Posts and Papers: Librarianship by Walking Around

A project I heartily endorse on a topic near and dear to my heart, launched by the Library Society of the World, Librarianship by Walking Around: The Library Society of the World is putting together an online and print-on-demand anthology of weblog posts, essays, articles, and other material entitled Librarianship by Walking Around, patterned after the successful Hacking the Academy project. Librarianship doesn't just happen in the library! Librarianship happens wherever information exchange happens--that is, just about everywhere. Librarianship by Walking Around celebrates librarians who…

Possummomma has gone silent

Many of us were fans of Possummomma and her blog, Atheist in a Mini-van. She was a passionate writer, struggling to make ends meet with her family, coping with lupus, and also having to deal with a lot of anti-atheist-bigotry in her community and online. Well, they finally got to her: she's gone offline and has put her blog under password protection, all because of some extreme harassment and accusations from, believe it or not, Christian fans of a dopey reality TV show. It's a long, sordid, complicated, ugly story which I'm not going to repeat here, sinc The Calladus Blog has covered it…

Ken Ham: still whining, but an online poll supports him

Yeah, poor Ken — he's still distressed that his attempt to prop up his credibility with the Cincinnati Zoo's was foiled. He's also complaining about an "atheist (a professor from the University of Minnesota-Morris)" who engineered his defeat. I wonder who that might be? Even more foolishly, though, he cites an online poll to back up his claims. The news website NKY.com (http://nky.cincinnati.com/) ran an online poll on the controversy. They gave the following options: YES--The museum promotes a religious point of view that conflicts with the zoo's scientific mission. NO--The promotion does…

Last Newspaper Standing

There is much blogospheric chatter right now about how newspapers will survive the combination of recession, with associated collapse in advertising revenue; the maturing of the internet as multi-media; and the obsolete business model of most newspapers. kos and atrios are, rightly, much disdainful of the "Morton Plan" "The Morton Plan" for saving newspapers. I call on all you publishers to decide individually (to ward off the antitrust folks) to charge for Internet access to your newspaper content: Offer your readers the choice of getting their paper online, with the advantages of expanded…

The Scientific Paper: past, present and probable future

Communication Communication of any kind, including communication of empirical information about the world (which includes scientific information), is constrained by three factors: technology, social factors, and, as a special case of social factors - official conventions. The term "constrained" I used above has two meanings - one negative, one positive. In a negative meaning, a constraint imposes limits and makes certain directions less likely, more difficult or impossible. In its positive meaning, constraint means that some directions are easy and obvious and thus much more likely for…

Linkzzz:Neuron Extension Cable,Ethics,Star Child

So... is the next step wireless neurons? just sayin... A "data cable" made from stretched nerve cells could someday help connect computers to the human nervous system. The modified cells should form better connections with human tissue than the metal electrodes currently used for purposes such as remotely controlling prosthetics (see Brain implant enables mind over matter). Here's the original article And here's some more randomness: As I'm sure those of you who work for the government (or a public university in my case) know - you often have to take these ridiculous ethics training…

Blog Suspended

Until Science Blogs decides whether it wants to be a platform for science writers or a platform for corporations to buy credibility, this blog is on hiatus. You can find my work at Ye Olde Blogge aka www.sharonastyk.com. Updates as events warrant - or rather, if events warrant. If you'd like to find out the secret evil backstory of my defection, you can read it here. Sharon

Darwin Quotes

It has been a bitter mortification for me to digest the conclusion that the 'race is for the strong' and that I shall probably do little more but be content to admire the strides others made in science. - Charles R. Darwin Support The Beagle Project Read the Beagle Project Blog Buy the Beagle Project swag Celebrate Darwin Day Prepare ahead for the Darwin Bicentennial Read Darwin for yourself.

The Beagle Board

The beagle board, which costs only about 150 bucks, is a full blown Linux-capable computer that is so simplified and low powered that it does not need a fan. Its main method of communication (other than video output) is via USB (no ethernet). But that can work. For a write-up about this cutie, go here. To just get it over with and buy one, go here.

Tobias Buckell Is Outnumbered...

...what with his wife, Emily, giving birth to twins. It sounds like he's pretty happy with this state of affairs, though. Go leave him a congratulatory comment. Or, better yet, go buy one of his books-- they're great fun for you to read, and will help keep Toby supplied with the vast number of diapers he'll need in the next several months...

Virginia is for (Straight, White, and Christian) Lovers

Ah, how exciting it is for Democrats. So much so that they forgive and/or forget moral lapses elsewhere, such as that old Virginia trick of state-sponsored discrimination. To avoid such easy ignorance, The World's Fair's Gift Shop and Haberdashery proudly links to the next great T-Shirt, available here (and courtesy of J.L.). Go wild, buy a dozen. They make a great holiday gift.

Bhut Jolokia Update

src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_VbG-d6SeGuA/RePVVb_nxrI/AAAAAAAAAD8/6QbLROwzDEk/s400/anandita-tamuly-eats-bhut-jolokia.jpg" align="left" height="344" width="238"> face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">I had not seen this when I first posted about the href="http://spectre.nmsu.edu/dept/academic.html?i=1251" rel="tag">bhut jolokia -- the world's hottest chile pepper.  There is a woman, Annindita Tamuly, in India who can eat 60 of them in two minutes.  And she smiles while doing it ( href="http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/videos.aspx?id=5897">video).  There is also a 17-month-…

Quote of the day

Each lab is like a tribe, it has its own particular traditions and rituals. X is stored here, Y is stored there and Z is made up fresh. We share reagent A, we make our own reagent B, we buy a kit for reagent C. It's hard when you enter the tribe, you have to learn all of these unwritten rules. - A good friend (who just started working in a new lab).